The School of Medico-Poetics

There I was, operating with my shiny new scalpel when a member of my surgical team left mid-transplant for more wine. Last Friday, Cabinet magazine hosted one of its famous Poetry Labs, this one devoted to William Carlos Williams, at its event space in Brooklyn. Going to a Poetry Lab is a little like playing Operation, except instead of “Cavity Sam,” you operate on poems. The event was organized by two Princeton humanities professors, D. Graham Burnett and Jeff Dolven, who took their academic title of “Doctor” pretty literally. They wore white lab coats and carried clipboards as they instructed us to examine poems by William Carlos Williams as if they were patients in need of care. First, we were asked to raise our hands and swear that we would not sue Cabinet if our alcohol consumption affected our ability to safely use the sharp instruments provided. Then, we began our diagnoses.

If the lab’s medical theme confuses you, allow me to explain: Williams was a successful doctor in addition to being a poet. In his autobiography, he writes, “ As a writer, I have been a physician, and as a physician a writer. ” Burnett and Dolven came up with a fun way to illustrate Williams’s observation. They pinned three of Williams’s poems to foam board and asked us to identify the major anatomic systems of “Daisy,” excise unhealthful growths from “The Storm,” and perform transplants on “May 1st Tomorrow.” Most of us used our tools—scalpels, clamps, forceps. One surgical team performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The team on the other end of my table told me they thought that “May 1st Tomorrow,” was really three patients: Siamese triplets with one heart. There are six iterations of the word “mind” in the poem, and one student had removed the sixth, which references “the male mind,” completely. “What do you want?” she said. “I’m a feminist poet.” She reported that they’d healed the patient. Meanwhile, my team had lost ours. No matter. At the end of the evening, Burnett and Dolven congratulated us: we were now licensed physicians in the William Carlos Williams School of Medico-Poetics.

Tonight, Cabinet is hosting an event about textual-appropriation. Cabinet never disappoints. I recommend you go!